A New Hampshire man convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his young daughter was sentenced Thursday to a minimum of 56 years in prison.
Adam Montgomery, 34, was found guilty in the death of 5-year-old Harmony Montgomery earlier this year.
While the body of the young victim has never been found, authorities believe she was killed in Manchester, N.H. in early December 2019, two years before she was reported missing.
During his trial in February, Montgomery’s estranged wife and Harmony’s stepmother, Kayla Montgomery, testified that he beat Harmony to death and stuffed the girl’s body into a duffel bag in the trunk of a car.
Prosecutors alleged he then spent months moving her body from place to place — including hiding it in a cooler at his mother-in-law’s apartment, in the ceiling vent of a homeless shelter, and in a walk-in freezer at his workplace — before finally disposing of the remains in March 2020.
Even though he pleaded guilty to abusing a corpse and falsifying physical evidence, he denied murdering his daughter.
Montgomery, who’s already serving a 33- to 67-year sentence from an unrelated firearms conviction, was sentenced on Thursday to 45 years to life for the murder charge, and a minimum of 11 more years for the charges of falsifying evidence, tampering with a witness and second-degree assault.
The sentences are to be served consecutively.
“Harmony was an innocent 5-year-old girl,” Judge Amy Messer said in an emotional hearing, according to NBC Boston. “You treated her in the worst of possible ways in both her life and in her death.”
The girl’s biological mother, Crystal Sorey, read an impassioned victim statement addressed to “the monster who killed my daughter.”
“She had a life worth living, unlike your own, and it bothered you to your core that she was nothing like you and everything like me,” she said.
The girl’s body is believed to be somewhere along a route Montgomery drove in Massachusetts. Authorities plan to keep searching for her remains.
With News Wire Services